Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

chaos-rampant I love this as a standalone film, but it's a remake, and it's in that function that I find in it a near-apotheosis for Kurosawa's perception, his personal idiosynchracy. In the Bryan Forbes film it's human machination that sets the kidnapping plot in motion, cunning and deception, in Kurosawa's remake it's happenstance, random cruelty.One scene particularly stands out for me in that regard, when the couple discover the young girl inexplicably lyind dead on the floor.Kurosawa highlights this set up with classical devices of theater, rain and lightning, the acceptable and expected portents of doom, but most importantly, with a cinema of utter, eerie, silence. It's not only that the girl's death is presented like an act of divine retribution, but also that it's quietly accepted as such. The lack of palpable explanation is not mentioned by the characters because, ostensibly, they understand the presence of the figurative devil exacting his dues, as do we.This of course is foreshadowed earlier in the film. Unlike the original Seance, the couple in the Kurosawa version simply discover the little girl in their house. The folly of keeping with them the girl for own reasons is not a mere scheme for glory but a yearning for a life that matters, for a small moment of feeling useful.The contrast is quietly heartwrenching, a tragedy, between a cold futile universe and the ordinary couple trying to make sense in it. The Shinto priest the husband calls on to perform an exorcism tells him that hell exists if you believe in it, it doesn't if you don't. For them, hell exists because they're open to the possibility.Is the ghostly presence in the film a hijink then, a kind of superfluous spectacle to make palatable the more important things? Yes and no. Ghosts in Shinto folk wisdom are a transmutation of guilt, of bad kharma, but also an aesthetic object of terror. This was never more apparent than with the advent of cinema. Seance gives the ghostly kid character, her haunting makes a difference because it's the haunting of a child. When she menacingly approaches the husband, we expect a certain kind of violence. Instead she merely pounces on him with the impotent anger of a child.Kurosawa sees himself as nothing more than a genre director. In films like Retribution, I see a director merely trying to break apart convention, for the pleasure or routine of it. Seance is a rare gem in this regard, it ventures for a look beyond the pale, the anguish and damnation of its horror echo through time. The parable matters because it talks of existence.Still, the man gives us a brilliant genre touch: the medium who can see the dead and be haunted by them but can't speak to them. The existential reading of this can be valuable if we arrive to it by our own admission.

screaminmimi First, I'll explain the 8. It's a plot thing. I found myself yelling at the two leads to not do something stupid, but no initial stupidity, no subsequent movie.Second, if you haven't seen "Séance on a Wet Afternoon" or "Macbeth," don't look at Kurosawa's interview on the DVD extras until after you see this movie. There are plot spoilers in the interview.Third, am I the only one who sees a parallel between both "Séance"s and "Macbeth"? All three are about power hungry women who work their will on their all too devoted spouses. Kurosawa saw it, beginning with a quote from Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow..." soliloquy and then check out the music that's playing when Kôji Yakusho's character, Satô, confronts his doppelgänger.Now for the differences among the three stories. Kurosawa states that he had not seen the original "Séance on a Wet Afternoon," but that he used the same novel as the source for his screenplay. He cited a difficulty in making a story originally taking place in 1960's England fit 21st Century Japan. One thing he cited was the difficulty of portraying a crime that might have been considered commonplace in '60's England and that would be such a rarity in present-day Japan as to be unthinkable for the average Japanese audience member. Another thing he did was to alter the way his female lead expressed her fundamental craziness. Kim Stanley's character was flamboyant, charismatic, coquettish and kittenish, disconcertingly so for a middle-aged hausfrau psychic superstar wannabe. Jun Fubki's rendering of Junko Satô is no less crazy, but she's introverted, uncharismatic, mousy, and playing older than she is. Lady Macbeth has been subjected to countless interpretations, all along the spectrum between the Stanley and Fubuki continuum. But all three have in common an implacable desire for power and husbands who will do their bidding. All three of them show more and more psychopathology as they are assailed by the ghosts they help create, but none of them consciously concedes any guilt. Their husbands, in contrast, assume more than their share of the blame. I leave it to the viewer to decide how much blame Satô should bear. To say more would be a spoiler.Another thing I love about this movie is the carpet of sound that takes the ordinary and makes it frightening without resorting to excessive distortion or trickery. The sound picture is to this movie what the lighting and cinematography were to "Séance on a Wet Afternoon." They both put me inside the story. I too found myself having to pause it because it was dragging me along for the ride to such an extent that the characters' hurts felt like my hurts too.

Musashi Zatoichi The Sixth Sense and A Simple Plan by way of Martin Heidegger, this genre-bending thriller is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.Katsuhiko (Koji Yakusho) is a mild-mannered sound-technician who is married to Junco (Jun Fubuki).While at first glance Junco seems to be an average hausfrau, she possesses great clairvoyant powers.Though she has slowly and quietly built a reputation as a medium, she proves to be completely incapable of working in a normal service industry job; she has the unfortunately tendency of being able to see the crimes of her patrons. Katsuhiko is aware of her unusual abilities but prefers to think of her as "normal."Young psychology graduate student Hayakawa (Teuyoshi Kusanagi) invites Junco to join his study on the paranormal. At the same time, the police are desperately searching for a young girl who was kidnapped by an ex-cop turned pervert.At Hayakawa's behest, the cops consult with Junco as to the child's whereabouts. Ironically enough, the girl escapes her captor and takes refuge in Katsuhiko's equipment case while he records sounds in the mountains.The next day, Junco's psychic sonar goes off and she discovers the missing child in their garage. This freak happenstance awakens a long-dormant ambition in Junco: convinced that her discovery was not a striking enough find, she hatches an ill-conceived scheme to make it seem more dramatic. While Katsuhiko tends to the unconscious girl, Junco scatters clues throughout the western suburbs of Tokyo and then informs the police of her psychic "insights." As the film progresses, their plan goes awry and the child meets a bad end. Junco's abilities boomerang on her, and soon she and Katsuhiko are haunted by the ghost of the girl. Noted stars Yukari Ishida and Show Aikawa make cameos. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.

kairothon Something a bit strange for a Kurosawa movie, Korei is (debatably) a remake of an old American movie (of the same name, if memory serves). It seems that in some of the scenes Kurosawa is much more focused on replicating the emotions of the domestic experience than trying to scare. After all, anyone who's seen Kairo, Cure or Charisma knows he has nearly master the latter. Because of this, if find that Korei is not as frightening as his typical fair. Also, some of the household drama comes off forced for the near first-timer in this field. But another way of thinking about it: it seems there is a pronounced old-time hollywood feel to some of the home scenes which may have been very intentional. All of the movie is presented as a sort of reference to this: the lightning behind the characters as they think evil thoughts, the simplicity of most of the shots (devoid of the overwhelming atmosphere typically present in K. Kurosawa films), even the fair simplicity of the characters. If it is seen this way (which i am increasingly convinced is how it may have been intended) then it is possible that the unlikely touches seen in this movie are not a failure at all, but an attempt at a homage. Whether that homage is a failure or not, I am in no position to say.